Daddy's Girl
by CEWatkins
Summary: AU fic set 12 years into the ZA. Laura Dixon and her grandmother fled their town when the dead didn't stay dead. They planned to meet up with Laura's father and his brother, but they never made it to the meeting place. Twelve years later, Laura has just barely managed to stay alive. After the massacre of her group, she's on her own but not for long. S3 characters.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Feet pounding against the ground, Laura struggled to keep ahead of the horde behind her. Her heart beat wildly in her chest as her ponytail whipped around behind her, side to side as she ran to survive. Her ankle was throbbing but she knew that if she stopped it would be worse. Her clothing was torn and barely modest, but still she ran. She'd managed to grab her backpack before she'd left, once she found somewhere safe, she would change. Spotting an old ranger look out up ahead, Laura willed herself to keep going, just those extra meters and she'd be safe. She hadn't seen a creep that could climb this far, and she'd seen more than her fair share of the ugly things.

She got to the tower, and didn't stop to think that there could be anything waiting up there, or that whoever had left it behind hadn't locked it. Hell, she'd camp out, clinging to the ladder all night, if it held any chance of those things getting bored and moving on. She was about half way up the first ladder, when a freakishly tall creep grabbed her ankle, causing her to cry out in both pain and alarm. Laura gripped the ladder tightly and shook her leg, begging any deity that was listening upstairs to let her live just another day.

Finally, her foot was free but Laura didn't let herself stop and sigh. She continued up the ladder, stopping only once she was at the top. It was only now that she stopped and let herself think of what could be waiting in the room above her. Creeps weren't the only scary thing in this new world. She'd had her fair share of run-ins with the nasty people left to inhabit the earth. Of course she'd also met people who had helped her survive, including the last group she had been with. However, they had met their untimely end during an ambush by a group of nasty men. What if she made it into the building only to find men like them up there? Men her daddy had warned her 'bout.

Shivering against the cool air, Laura watched the sun sink lower in the sky and felt the burn in her arms. How long had she been hanging there? The horde weren't showing any signs of moving on, so Laura steeled her nerve and knocked on the trap door, listening for any extra noise coming from inside the shelter, only to have the trap fly open and to have three guns pointed in her face.  
>"I.." Laura squeaked, her eyes meeting the cold eyes of a man with a bushy beard. "I…" Swallowing, Laura darted her eyes to a younger, Asian man. "Please don't hurt me." She asked, sounding very much the child she tried to pretend she wasn't. Her eyes met a third, silent face. He was probably about her age, maybe a little older. It was hard to tell when the post-apocalyptic world had aged everyone so terribly. She tried pleading with him, but his gaze was just as hardened as the first two men. "I've been running for so long and I hurt my ankle. Please, just let me stay the night, I'll move on once they leave. Don't send me back out there, p-please."<p>

Her voice broke and her arms shook, about to give out any moment. Laura noticed the Asian man glance towards the older man at his side.  
>"How many walkers you killed?" The youngest man asked, his voice deep.<br>"W-what?" Laura asked, looking dumbstruck momentarily. The man just rolled his eyes.  
>"I asked how many walkers you killed." He gestured down to the creeps below her with his head, keeping his eyes trained on her.<br>"Oh the creeps?" She said, wrapping a leg around the pole knowing that her arms wouldn't hold much longer. "I… It's been so long since this all…" The older man pulled back the hammer on his gun. "I don't know! No more than twenty! I was almost always with a group! I'm small, people tried to protect me so I didn't need to kill many. I never learned how to do anything, my daddy never taught me!"  
>"What about people? How many people you killed?" The Asian continued and Laura gulped, breaking eye contact to look towards the horde below. They wouldn't let her stay when they knew, but she couldn't risk going back down there to be ripped alive. Better them to kill her so she wouldn't feel it.<br>"One but he tried to…" She couldn't say it, it was so shameful.  
>"Tried to what?" The older man said finally. "Why'd you kill him?"<br>"Please just let me in." She sobbed, not wanting to die and she couldn't hold herself up any longer. Her left hand slipped and her eyes went wide with panic and fear. "Please, oh God, please let me in. I'll do anything. I don't have any weapons 'cept for a knife in my backpack, I swear!" Her right hand started to slip as she struggled to grab back onto the ladder with sweaty hands. The young boy reached out to grab her flailing hand, but he made no attempt to pull her up.  
>"Just tell my dad why and we'll let you up. I promise." He told her, his eyes looking more human than they had the whole time. The tears were rolling down her face now, fat and heavy as her chest heaved in panic.<br>"He broke into our camp and killed everyone, and then he tried to… force himself onto me. The woman I was sharing a tent with had left a gun there for me while she went on watch and I shot him with it. I was so shocked I left the gun and ran. Everyone had turned and I couldn't find anyone. I've been running ever since. Please, I don't wanna die. I'm not dangerous."

The older man nodded and the Asian man reached down to grab her other hand as he and the young man pulled her into the tower. Laura was vaguely aware of the trap door shutting behind her, but instead she pulled her knees up to her chest and sobbed loudly. She was safe. God she was safe. Her heart was pounding, whether from the fear of being up on that ladder with nowhere to go or the running she had done, but she didn't care. It was still pounding. Finally, out of sheer exhaustion, she fell asleep.

She awoke a little while later to hushed voices and on a cot off to one corner of the room, a dusty smelling blanket draped over her. For a moment Laura was scared, unsure of her surroundings, but then it all came flooding back to her. She wouldn't cry any more. She couldn't. This was what happened now. It had been twelve years, people died. Laura just needed to harden up and get over it. Rolling over and away from the wall, she came face to face with a wide eyed girl, causing Laura to let out a soft yelp of shock which in turn caused a group of people to come running.  
>"Sorry! No need to panic. The little girl said, grinning sheepishly at the group of people, causing a few of them to chuckle and the old man from before to shake his head and walk away. "My fault."<p>

Looking around, Laura realized that there were more people than the three who had held her at gun point, and not just men. She gazed around at them in awe. How had a group this large managed to stay together? She'd been in a large group when the world first went to hell with her grandma, but they hadn't made it out of Atlanta. She and her grandma had been on their way to meet up with her father and his brother, but they'd never made it to the meeting place. Laura moved to grip her backpack, needing the comfort of the old worn photo of father for comfort. It wasn't there. She began to look around frantically.  
>"They took it for inspection." The girl told her.<br>"Judith." The young man hissed, eyeing Laura warily.  
>"What? It's the truth." The girl, Judith, huffed. "I don't see why y'all need it, Carl. She looks harmless. Like a scared little rabbit."<br>"I need that bag." Laura said, ignoring Judith and Carl's argument.  
>"They found something that freaked them. They probably won't give it back any time soon." This earned Judith a hard glare from Carl. "Again, it's the truth."<p>

"What's your name?" Came a voice from behind Carl and Judith. It was the old man again and he was holding her back in one hand and her photograph in the other. Laura bit back a retort about how it was none of his business and that she wanted her bag back. She knew it wouldn't be wise when they'd, so far, shown her nothing but hospitality.  
>"Laura." She said simply instead. He looked as though he wanted more information. "Laura Dixon." The room went even more silent and her bag was handed back to her. He made no effort to hand back the photo that she knew held her father, holding a newborn Laura. "You can't keep that." She told him, worried that he wouldn't give it back. "It's mine. I need it. It's all I have of him. Have a heart." Judith stood and took it from the old man's hand. She looked over the photo and her eyes widened before narrowing.<br>"Daryl?" She asked, looking up at the old man who just stood there, looking blankly at her. Judith looked at the photo once more before handing it back to Laura who clutched the photo to her chest and let out a sigh of relief.  
>"Rick?" A woman asked, stepping towards the old man, Daryl or Rick, and placing her hand on his shoulder. "He ever mention to you?" The man shook his head.<br>"We best wait for him to get back from hunting. He'll be waiting for the horde to move on. They're almost gone."

At the man's words, the group moved back to the table they were talking around before. Carl glanced at her once more before joining them. Judith, however, sat down on the cot beside her and patted knee.  
>"Wanna talk about it?" She asked, looking at Laura. There wasn't much to talk about, especially when, Laura assumed, she'd only had to repeat her story whenever the man they were waiting for came returned.<p>

If he returned.

**AN: I know. I'm a terrible person. I know I'm behind on updates for ANL, but this muse has not left me alone all week. I'll do my best to update both at the same time. ANL will go up Wednesdays (AEST) and DG will go up Sundays. I finish my course on Friday, and I'll be starting full time work, but I'll try and stay on top of things. My muses, as I'm sure people who write and RP will know, are very fickle creatures. At times I'll have nothing to write about for days, and then BAM! Attack of the muse. Anyway, let me know what you think of this new story. Or don't. That's cool too.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

The waiting was the worst.

No one would tell her anything about the man they were waiting on. Hell, the only person to speak to her for long periods of time was Judith. Laura felt like she was a prisoner. As they waited Judith tried to fill her in on the people in the group. Laura had learnt that most of the group had been together since the beginning. They'd lost people and collected people along the way, but generally they stuck together. The group didn't have a single leader, but a council. This council was made up of Rick (her father), Carl (her brother), Carol, Glenn, Maggie, Beth, Ben, Aaron and Daryl. It was Daryl they were waiting on to make the decision about Laura staying. Before all of this, Laura would have taken the fact that the final man they were waiting on shared the same name as her father as a good sign. She believed in little coincidences like that as a good thing. Before all of this, she might have even held a little bit of hope that the man they were waiting on _was_ her father, but things just didn't work that way anymore.

Five more men and two women made up the rest of the group. Judith had pointed to and named each one. The two women were paired off with two of the men. Besides Carl, there were two others around her age. Luke was two years older than Carl, making him four years older than Laura. Ella was a year older than Carl, three years older than Laura, and married to Ben, a big burly man who reminded Laura of a Paul Bunion. The other woman, Cassie, was in her late forties and married to Daniel, the group's medical man who looked to be pushing sixty. Once Rick had given him the all-clear, he had looked over Laura's ankle and wrapped it tightly deeming it a sprain. He'd been kind to her, telling her how Cassie was his second wife and he her third husband. His first wife had died long before the dead started walking. Cassie had been separated from her first husband in the early days of their marriage and the second had died about six years earlier. He told her that nowadays, it wasn't safe for a woman to be walking around unattached. A lot of the men they had met were "claiming" women and using them before leaving them for dead. Most of the time, it didn't matter that a woman was spoken for, but it helped. That was why they avoided groups. She'd tried to ask about Beth and Carol and who they were with, but Rick had called him back saying that he'd been helping her for long enough.

Laura tried to get more out of Judith, would these people take pity on her and let her stay? Was this Daryl man a good man? Would he sway the rest of the council in her favour? Laura didn't have any certain skills to help the group. In the past, people had just taken pity on the scrawny scrap of a girl. As she'd lost one group and moved onto the next, there had been some groups who had let her stay purely for her beauty. It was shameful for her to admit, even to herself, but at times she'd used it herself. She'd never done more than flirt there was still part of the worn down young woman who believed in love, even if the people who seemed to survive as this thing progressed were getting colder and colder towards their fellowman. Sighing, Laura hugged her knees close to her chest. An entire day had passed since she had woken up and no sign of this Daryl person. The zombies below had mostly moved on, leaving only a few stragglers wandering around aimlessly below.  
>"He should be back by now." Laura heard the grey-haired woman, Carol, speak. "There's only a few of them below, Daryl could take them."<br>"Unless he lost a few bolts." Rick corrected. "You know he's been short as it is." Carol made a non-committal sound and looked away.  
>"Don't you think we should send someone out, Rick?" Glenn asked, putting his arm around Maggie – who Judith had said was his wife.<br>"Not just yet." Rick answered. "I'm not worried yet. He's often gone a day at a time. Game is rare these days, it's harder to find."

Judith had explained to Laura that Daryl was a hunter and a tracker. That was about all she would tell her. They were keeping secrets and that didn't sit well with Laura.  
>"I just don't feel right with <em>her<em> here." Carol told the council, flicking her eyes towards Laura. "It doesn't add up. He would hav—" She let her words trail off at the glare Rick shot her before the group were back to whispering heatedly. Laura pushed to her feet causing several pairs of eyes to look at her.  
>"Just stretching my legs." She told them, holding her hands up. Honestly, she could understand why the group was treating her this way, many groups had in the past, but it didn't make her feel any less horrible. "Listen, I could just go…" Laura sighed, once again drawing the group to look at her. "If you could help me take out the few down there, I could take my chances."<br>"Rick," Daniel said his voice soft but firm. "She won't last two seconds out there on that ankle of hers." Why wasn't Daniel on the council? At least then she'd have one person on her side.  
>"I just don't feel right when y'all are so dead set against me being here." She continued, smiling at the old man for sticking up for her.<br>"We don't want you to leave." Beth spoke up, finally looking at the girl. "There are just some things we're unsure of. We want to wait for Daryl to get back so you can tell us your story. We just don't want you to have to repeat things again when he gets back."  
>"If he gets back." Laura corrected.<br>"No. _When_."

Laura sighed once more and was about to sit back down, when the trap door sprung open causing her to scream. The group jumped into action, all readying their weapons only to relax when they saw a man climb up through the hole. Laura gasped, the man wore a leather vest. A leather vest with angel wings on the back of it, just like the one Laura remembered her father wearing.  
>"Who the hell just screamed?" The man growled, hauling a deer up through behind him, his back still to Laura who refused to take her eyes off the vest. Her knees began to shake, causing her to sit down where she stood. Her skin felt hot but cold all at the same time. The hairs on the back of her neck and arms standing up at attention.<br>"Daryl." Rick greeted the man, looking relieved.  
>"Told ya I'd find us something to eat." His voice sounded like he was grinning. All Laura could think was how had he found that vest? How could he have stolen it from her father? Was he still alive?<br>"Daryl." Carol said, stepping forward, her face grim.  
>"What? Why do you all look so serious?"<p>

Beth stepped forward and handed the man the photograph from Laura's pack and the man instantly froze, dropping the deer to the floor with a dull thud.  
>"W-where did y'all get this?" He asked shakily. "Where did you find it?!" His voice was more demanding now as his head darted around, no doubt making eye contact with everyone in the group. Laura stood up, her legs still shakey. Judith moved to steady her.<br>"I-it's m-mine." Laura spoke finally, her voice soft and filled with so much emotion. It couldn't be. Daryl spun around and looked at her, his face showing so many emotions at once and Laura began to cry, bringing her left hand up to cover her mouth. Daryl clutched the ripped photo to his chest and took a hesitant step forward.  
>"Laura?" Her name was barely a whisper on his lips. He handed the photo back to Beth, his eyes never leaving Laura's. He'd aged, as one tends to do, but he still looked like the man in the photograph. He still looked like the man that Laura desperately clung to in her dreams at night.<br>"Daddy." The word had barely left her lips before he was crossing the room and pulling her into a tight hug, uncaring of who saw the tears spilling from his eyes.  
>"I thought I'd lost you." He told her. "I thought you were gone and I'd never see you again."<br>"Atlanta was overrun. We couldn't get to the meeting point." Laura told him, fat tears falling down her cheeks. "We tried to find you but we couldn't. We tried so hard, daddy."  
>"I know. Merle and I, we searched for weeks. He didn't want to give up either. Even when we met up with a group, we'd go out looking. Left messages and signs for ya for years." Daryl told her, leaning back to press his big hands over her cheeks before moving them to her shoulders and then arms. "God, Laura. Look at you. You're all grown up. I remember when you were just a babe in your momma's arms. Look just like her."<br>"Still got your eyes." She told him, beaming up at the man who had driven an hour both ways for a month just to teach her how to ride a bike. "When you climbed up in here, I was so mad at you. I thought you'd stolen my daddy's vest. Grandma worked so hard to make you that thing." Daryl chuckled and ruffled her hair before letting out a deep breath.  
>"Shit. I've got my girl back."<p>

Remembered that they weren't alone, Daryl turned and looked right into Rick's eyes.  
>"This is Laura. She's my daughter."<p>

**AN: Ah hah! I stayed up an hour and a half later than I should have and our internet cut out twice but I have this chapter uploaded on time! I am going to be so dead at work tomorrow OTL. I hope this chapter was worth the wait. Daryl and Laura are reunited, hooray!  
>I was thinking I might write a series of one shots about different times in their lives for a bit of backstory. What do y'all think? They'd be released on different days than ANL and DG, probably a Friday.<br>Also; who would you like Daryl to be paired with? Personally, I ship Bethyl but if enough people wanted it, I would try to write Caryl or Rickyl. This story is going to primarily centre around Laura and her relationships, however, and there most likely will not be any Bethyl/Caryl/Rickyl smut at all. Maybe implied, but most likely not written.  
>I'll post a poll on my author page, so please go and vote there, otherwise I'll decide. Reviews are appreciated but not required. Until Sunday (or Wednesday if you follow ANL). x<strong>


End file.
